Mark States: home-boy of Oakland poetry takes 3,000-mile leap for love

Mark States is not afraid of change. In fact, he seems to court it. The latest redirection he has chosen was announced via Facebook over the holidays: he has become engaged to writer Kyha Floyd from Charlotte, North Carolina. At the end of February, the Oakland native will join his bride and her family and make that state his new home.This past Monday, States broke the news to his beloved Poetry Express  family here.

Along with Jim Barnard and Nancy Wogan, States coordinates and hosts the popular poetry reading series at Priya Indian Restaurant on San Pablo in Berkeley. Launched at the Berkeley Bakery & Café, and held in Bernard's living room for awhile, the Monday-evening series features an invited poet--perhaps someone with a new book or an out-of-town poet--as well as an open-mic.

"Poetry Express will continue without me," says States about the popular venue which attracts a regular crowd of local poets, including Debra Grace Khattab, John Rhodes, Jan Dederick, John Rowe, Garrett Murphy, Amos White,  Walter Liggett, Steve Arntson and many others. However, it has largely been due to States’ open and friendly personality, that the scene has been especially welcoming to newcomers, runs efficiently, and shows respect to readers and audience members alike.

It was part of his goal, he says, to create and run a series that "a poet would not be embarrassed to bring a date to." For those who have attended many readings, we know exactly what he means. (I’ve been at venues where drunks in the audience heckled the readers on stage and where a performer pulled out a very sharp, dangerous looking stiletto--knife not shoe--and pointed it at the audience a few feet away.)

States first got involved in the local poetry scene in Berkeley in 1993 at the Elmwood Café. Louis Cuneo, his next-door neighbor at the time, and Mary Rudge, Alameda’s poet laureate, encouraged him. He started co-hosting Cuneo’s “Touch of a Poet” series a year later and has been active with running poetry events since. “Louis taught me the ropes about hosting,” States says, while Dale Jensen, now a coordinator of the Nefeli Café series in Berkeley, “taught me about doing publicity.”

States began writing poetry in high school. He attended U.C. Berkeley where he majored in Ethnic Studies and concentrated on Langston Hughes. The Harlem Renaissance poet is one of States’ major influences, offering an example of poetry that looks simple at its surface yet always packs a punch.

About his own work, States says his poems are driven by metaphors and usually “have a point.” He frequently writes on buses, BART, and late at night and only occasionally attends a writing workshop. “Poetry Slams have been my greatest editor,” he explains. At these performance-focused events, readers have only two or three minutes to make an impact on an audience. At many open-mics, States explains, a reader may have the relative luxury of having five or more minutes to present work. Performing at slams taught him to cut poems that are “wordy, repetitive, and take three sentences to say what could be said in two.”

States has published two chapbooks: Reinvention came out in 1995 from Mother’s Hen, and Grip of the Past in 2000. In 2001, he produced a limited-edition, mini-chapbook with the Laguna Poets Series called Tongue Control #215, and in 2004, a video entitled “Oakland Crazy” in 2004, which showcases his readings taped at the Beanery in 2003 during his annual Birthday Bash.

States has been a staple of the Bay Area’s most venerable poetry organizations, including the Bay Area Poets Coalition and the Berkeley Poetry Festival. Quoted by the Berkeley Daily Planet in 2001, States pointed out that such organizations are second families for many poets who have moved to the Bay Area without kin. On holidays, “this is a way for them to break bread together.”

States wins his way into your heart not long after you meet him: he has formed solid bonds in the region. When he fell seriously ill in early 2009, word spread swiftly through the poetry community. Eventually diagnosed with an extreme form of hyper-thyroidism,  he had been losing weight precipitously and landed in the hospital. The disease is now controlled with medication, but States believes he had probably been sick for several years prior to the crisis.

According to States, the Bay Area has an “enviable scene” of poetry readings and accommodates many styles of poetry and poet personalities. The audience is not as divided by tastes as in other geographical regions. “Here, you will find slam poets who go to open-mics, and open-mic poets who attend slams. You have hipsters in San Francisco and people working in multi-media performance. Geographically, we are closer together and cross-fertilize more easily than in other areas where there is any semblance of a poetry scene.”

One of States’ central concerns has been making sure that younger people--the crowd who still like to go out late at night and go club-hopping, etc.--are welcomed in to the broader poetry community; he is also not afraid to use his voice for positive social change. In 2003, the New York Times quoted him at a poetry slam organized to lobby for affordable housing. States described properties that were routinely neglected by slumlords: "The stench of mold on wet cement made even the gnats gasp and our throats burned like nuclear reactors."

States met Kyha on Facebook--a true 21st century romance--and plans to wed her and join her family in the south. In all likelihood, he will jump in to the local poetry community there and soon be creating or hosting another series.Poetry Express, which turns nine-years-old this year, will have a special reading on April 4th, but the show will go on without States. Priya  provides a pleasant setting for poets to share their work while enjoying delicious Indian cuisine at a discount. The restaurant is located at 2072 San Pablo Avenue, in Berkeley. Open-mic sign-ups starts at 7 p.m., and the featured reader is called to the microphone at about 7:45. Arrive around 6:30 to order and eat your dinner and be sure to tell your waiter you are there for the reading to get your 10% discount.

The reading, however, is free, like so many of the best things in life truly are--made possible through the dedication and passion of poets like the Bay Area’s native-son Mark States.

Schedule of Featured Readers at Poetry Express:
1/17    Open-mic theme of “Other Peoples Poetry Night”
1/24    Rebecca Foust and Lorna Stevens, collaborating artists on God, Seed
1/31    Sarah Miller (from Los Angeles)
2/7      David Erdreich
2/14    MK Chavez and William Taylor, Jr.
2/21    Traci Darling (from San Diego) with special guest Leah Steinberg
2/28    Open-mic theme of “legacies”: benefit for Committee on South African Solidarity)
3/7      To Be Announced
3/14    Donna Lane
3/21    BC Petrakos (from Los Angeles)
3/28    Open-mic theme of “the women in your life” with special guest Cynthia Bryant
4/4      Poetry Express’ 9th Anniversary with Marc Kockinos
4/11    Kevin Lee (from Long Beach) with surprise guest
4/18    Julia Vinograd
4/25    Open-mic theme of “poems and stories about Priya Restaurant” (celebrating eight years at Priya)

POEMS BY MARK STATES

Steppin Out

Steppin out of a moment in time and in2
the space
U and i share, where
wind stands tall and still
where a twinkle in the eye appears in the sky

Steppin out of a door and in2 a feeling
sitting quietly & holding hands, a bridge we cross
over a river convulsing
we stop 2 sift diamonds from sunlight
2 inhale silence & exhale dreams

where love is 4ever what is a heartbeat or 2
when everything, Y question how we came 2 here
with the taste of ocean mist so far from shore
so close
2 each other's open mind
the highest branch of the tallest tree
glistens within reach

In the space of a moment
time fills a racing heart, and i can feel U enter
the room
with back turned 2 the door
                          (c) 2009 Mark States

Stoned Has Turned

sometimes I get in these moods
where the only thing that moves
me is a jump and holler song,
work is heavy & my face stretches long,
there‘s so much distraction I cannot focus
on the moment, a month flashes
past and all I got to say is good riddance

a pot of water boils and someone
grabs its handle and this brew of words scalds

I look at you looking at me
a smile streaks comet-like across night
sky I sigh cuz the stone
has turned to heart and shadows in their morning take flight

Universe clears I hear your silent
thoughts, yeah, I too groove
to the spirit called U
with slow love songs filling shell of body
I lower an arm on your turntable knowin
folks will call this a silly love poem
so what? the world is too full
of hurt, sometimes I get in a mood
to reflect the love that’s shown me.
                (c) 2009 Mark States